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Homeward Bound |
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The saying, ‘Home is where the Heart is’ goes well with the millions of NRIs spread on every corner of the world; whose heart still beats for India inspite of residing miles away from their motherland. And with Indian economy and real estate poised at a favorable state, many second generation Brit-Asians are contemplating a life in the country of their parents. Desi Eye captures what has ceased to become a unique phenomenon of a reverse brain-drain.
The topic of immigration and asylum policy always raises great debate, but the increasing trend of second and third generation Asian Britons who are ‘jacking in the Union’ is just as relevant, as many British Asians from these generations are now leaving the UK to return to the country of their birth or parental origin. A new report, published by the Institute for Public Policy Research , suggests an |
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increasing number of British Asians are packing up and making the move: over 32,000 Britons currently live in India whilst another 47,000 have settled in Pakistan.
The topic of immigration and asylum policy always raises great debate, but the increasing trend of second and third generation Asian Britons who are ‘jacking in the Union’ is just as relevant, as many British Asians from these generations are now leaving the UK to return to the country of their birth or parental origin. A new report, published by the Institute for Public Policy Research , suggests an increasing number of British Asians are packing up and making the move: over 32,000 Britons currently live in India whilst another 47,000 have settled in Pakistan.
Many are second generationers–the children of desi immigrants. Brought up outside of South Asia, they are now lured by the promise of a growing economy. Dalbir Bains, a former department store buyer in London, is among them. Bains recently moved to Mumbai and openedher own lingerie shop. Her parents, who immigrated to the UK from India in the 60s, were less than thrilled. “They were really shocked,” she says. But Bains remains convinced that the “real land of opportunity is India and China’. They are the progressive countries where you can really make a difference.”
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Vandana Saxena Poria is another British Asian who left successful career in England to start new life in India. Vandana, a Chartered Accountant with ten years experience in Eastern and Central Europe, launched Get Through Guides, a company providing educational materials and training with her husband last year, while Dalbir, a former buying director at BHS, opened an upmarket lingerie boutique in Mumbai called Boudoir London. Both cite economic expediency rather than any great cultural necessity as the stimulus for their moves.
‘My husband and I were born and bred in the UK, but now I’d say we have two homes,’ says Vandana. ‘India is booming – in the next five years we are going have 400 million in the middle class with 70 per cent of the population under 25. That’s a huge market and, for anyone with self-confidence and |
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ambition, a great opportunity.’ Dalbir agrees: ‘I started the business because I saw a gap in the market which suited my years of experience. I felt I had hit a glass ceiling in my career and I wanted a new challenge,’ She feels she has been granted that challenge: ‘I don’t regret coming here but it’s not been easy. I never felt like a foreigner in England, but I felt like one here.
So while I like Mumbai, I wouldn’t call it home. Home is Fulham. It’s Leamington Spa. England is my home.’ Vandana, however, isn’t so resolute. Like many others, her quest for economic advancement has yielded a new identity defined by cultural plurality. And it’s one she embraces: ‘Our parents moved to England to make a better life for themselves and now we’ve gone back to India to do the same. I guess that makes me British and Indian.’ But some British Asians aren’tjust leaving the UK to cash in on the economic boom at home , some are looking for something much more deeper. Such as writer Nirdip Dhaliwal who is the jacking the Union for life in New Delhi.
Just a year after his divorce from columnist and former magazine editor Liz Jones, Nirpal Dhaliwal is going back to the land of hisancestors to “find himself” and perhaps to escape his past. |
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The 34-year-old author and writer has admitted that he is moving to India to put some distance between him and ex-wife, also admits he is now in search of some perspective. “Aged 34, with a failed marriage behind me, I am undertaking that most clichéd of Western indulgences: I am going to India to ‘find myself ‘,” he said. “Part of my decision to go to India is driven by my desire to put distance between my ex wife that will allow us to emotionally untangle ourselves and give me the space to discover who I am.”
Distressed by childhood visits to India, Dhaliwal did not return for 20 years. His mother had grown up in Punjab and come to England to marry his father, who moved to this country when he was nine. “In the early Eighties there was no economic boom and I saw poverty and distress I would not forget. ..I watched the tedious rural drudgery my aunts and cousins undertook everyday - milking cows, chopping fodder, fetching water, sweeping dust that forever blew into our house.”
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But now after returning to the country he found himself at home. “On a modest Western income, I can live comfortably and have access to better and quicker health care than I can in Britain…. In India I only have to walk outside to fi nd culture, cuisine and stimulating conversation. There, I never feel a moment’s boredom.” “And if I marry again, I’d love to raise a family there, where people’s lives are lived much more communally and children are adored.”
Dhaliwal adds: “So many Indians like me, born and raised in the West, are returning, wanting to reconnect with their motherland as much as seek their fortunes. “Most of the Americans and Australians I know are people of Indian origin I’ve befriended there.” “It is now a society where we can be as modern and cosmopolitan as we want while immersing ourselves in its ancient culture.India wields an irresistible ancestral pulland is now the place where we can most truly be ourselves.” |
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